Next April's Market Street Prototyping Festival promises to transform San Francisco's pre-eminent faultline of extreme wealth and extreme poverty into a winsome place equipped with artificial fog installations and stylized public ping-pong tables.
There's plenty to make one feel young again, but only one installation is expressly designed for that purpose. Titled "Three for Life," it will consist of a room in which normal-size adults wander in to find themselves confronted with oversize furniture recalling Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann in her massive chair.
"Three for Life" creator Marie Applegate is hoping the jolt of being transported back to toddlerhood is to creativity what Edith Ann was to sketch comedy. "Age three is when you're integrated into the world enough to be aware but you still have that sense of being in awe," she says. "That helps reconnect creativity and compassion."
As such, those struck with a 3-year-old's inspiration will find art supplies on hand. The paintbrushes figure to be oversize as well.
Applegate hopes her attempt at an emotional time machine inspires the creativity and wonder of a toddler, but acknowledges that it may yet lead adults to channel a child's less desirable traits. (There are no plans for an oversize timeout room.)
Most of all, Applegate is waiting to see what happens in a space in which adults are not only allowed to play again, but encouraged to. Which, when you think about it, describes this city pretty well.
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